The Oscars & Half-Ass Predictions

It’s that time to honor the best films Hollywood has dished out to the world in the past year. Awarding the artistic merits of performers and filmmakers whose work will be an enduring testament in film. They will join the Oscar family and the term ‘Oscar Winner’ will come before their name in their obituary. They will join the ranks of the chosen few who the Academy of Arts and Sciences believed were worthy enough to bestow this honor upon.

Yes, that intro was dripping with sarcasm.

I was a never a big Oscar fan and always thought it was just a night for Hollywood to pat itself on it’s back with a lot of fashion, promotion and shallowness. The term ‘Oscar Winner’ doesn’t hold that much weight for me. I mean Whoopi Goldberg won one! Most of my favorite films didn’t win Oscars. If you look at the list of past films, directors and actors that have never won one it’s pretty mind-boggling. Especially when you see who and what films did win that year.

Inevitably people will have the same complaints about the show. It’s too long and it’s too boring, like those are new observations. That’s what the show has always been and always will be. The Oscars seem more irrelevant with each passing year. By the time they roll around we’ve read about so many other award shows and films and performances that have already been honored at them, the Oscars seem too late. But the show is still number one in interest with fans. I never read about Golden Globe parties or Independent Spirit Award pools at the office. So the Oscars have them beat in that regard. I wouldn’t normally give them much attention, until someone asked me to fill out their Oscar pool sheet. “Hey, you like movies! Can you fill this out for me, I have no idea.” So being the helpful guy I am I did.

Honestly, I haven’t seen many films nominated so it’s more than guess work on my part to predict any winners. I’m just going by what I’ve heard other people say, but basically you would probably have a better chance of picking the winners than I would. The big change the Oscars decided to make this year has been nominating ten films for Best Picture. This probably has less to do with actually honoring these films or them having a decent chance at winning, than it does with shoe-horning more popular films into the telecast in order to attract more of an audience. What can I say – I’m cynical.

Out of the ten films nominated for Best Picture I’ve only seen three – District 9, Inglourious Basterds and Up. (nope I haven’t seen Avatar -I’m probably the only person out there that hasn’t) It seems it’s going to come down between Avatar and The Hurt Locker and I’d go with Locker to win it. No real reason. I do want to check out each of them though. Along with that, Kathryn Bigelow will win for best director. I realized something about Bigelow after reading about her recently – she hasn’t really directed too many films. Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days, K-19. I think there were a few others, but for the amount of time she’s been around it I thought she had done more feature films. Not that it matters that much, it was just something that surprised me.

Then Sandra will win hers for that football movie. I always thought she was cute. Plus, I like the fact she’s embracing her Razzie nomination of Worst Actress for All About Steve. I’m not sure if I’ll even watch any of the show. Although I love Steve Martin and would like to hear some of what he does, the tradeoff of sitting through three-plus hours of boring nonsense doesn’t seem worth it. I’m dreading for weeks afterwards being besieged by countless hours of those‘what they were wearing’ vapid reports and articles. So I’m prepared to avoid those and maybe finally I’ll take the time to check out the newly anointed Best Picture winner, because the term ‘Oscar Winner’ carries a lot of weight with me. (some sarcasm again)

FOLLOWUP: I won my Oscar pool, winning in eighteen out of twenty-four categories! It wasn’t really that difficult though. The second place finisher had nine right! It’s not that much of a challenge when most people didn’t recognize any of the films listed, admitting only Star Trek sounded familiar…..